Elvis and the Underdogs (2 page)

My response to this was “Huh?” So then my mom told me that without this titanium lug nut, the rocket ship wasn't going anywhere. She said it was a metaphor about me being born premature and tiny, and that what my dad was trying to say was that the whole family wouldn't work right without me. And my response to this was “Huh?” And my mom said it means my dad loves me and I'd understand the deeper meaning when I was older. Basically, the titanium lug nut was something cool I could show my friends. She put a leather string on it so I wouldn't lose it.

I actually won my first blue ribbon with it when I told my kindergarten class what my dad said. Yes, that's right, I won the vote that day for best show-and-tell. (It was only later I realized that during the course of the year every kid in the class eventually won a ribbon. But I did win mine first, which I still feel means something.) Anyway, so it's been my good luck charm ever since. I always carry it around with me. I pull it out of my pocket whenever I see Billy Thompson. Maybe it doesn't really help much. But for all I know, things could be even worse without it.

So when I pulled the lug nut out of my pocket on that day, I saw Billy turn the new kid's laptop case upside down over his head. All the kid's papers, books, pencils, and whatnot came showering around him, graph paper flying everywhere. I felt bad for the kid, I really, really did, but at the same time I also felt a tiny bit relieved that it wasn't me. And then I felt guilty for feeling relieved it wasn't me. That kid didn't deserve to get picked on by Billy any more than I deserved it.

Then I panicked. What if Billy spotted me and thought of me as the main course after a delicious appetizer of new kid on a cracker? I felt light-headed and whispered to myself, “Please don't see me. Please don't see me. Please don't see me. . . .” After that, I don't remember a thing, until I woke up in the hospital.

I know it sounds freaky to wake up in a hospital, and I'm sure it is for most kids, but another thing you should know about me, I'm
not
most kids. When I hear my mom's friends talk about me, they sometimes call me “sickly” or “poor dear,” but what I hear most often is “special.” They even say it in a voice like they're using air quotes. This is because I happen to get sick a lot. You name it and I've had it: flu, bronchitis, upper respiratory infection, pneumonia, asthma attack, bladder infection, allergies, foot stuck in pickle jar, itchy head, hamster bite that got infected, weird rashes, twitchy eyes, laryngitis, kickball in the face, spider bite, fell in bathtub, fell out of bed, fell out of car (it wasn't moving, relax), unexplained swollen big toe. I've spent three hundred plus days in the hospital over the last ten years, four months, and fifteen days of my life.

I know three hundred days sounds like a lot. It's almost an entire year of my life. Like I said before, I was born super premature, so I spent the first four months of my life at the hospital, so that's why the number is so high. I was kinda hoping they'd just go ahead and name the pediatric floor of the hospital after me (the Benji Wendell Barnsworth Wing sounds pretty good, huh?), but apparently you have to be superrich and give money to get stuff named after you. So when I grow up and get superrich, I'm gonna give money to this hospital and name it after some kid who's stuck there all the time just like me.

But truth be told, the hospital isn't so bad. Mainly because I have Dino's punch card. Dino is my favorite nurse. He made me a hospital punch card like they have at frozen yogurt places (buy ten yogurts and get the eleventh free!), so after I have ten hospital visits, I get a cool prize. For my last prize, Dino took me up to a different floor (one where he said all the patients were heavily medicated and wouldn't hear us if we got too loud), and we got to race wheelchairs down the hall.

So when I opened my eyes and saw the fluorescent overhead lights, my first thought was the punch card. Then I heard my mom shriek.

“Benji! My baby, are you awake?! Can you hear me?!”

“Hey, Mom, did Dino punch my card yet?” I asked.

Here's what you need to know about my mom. She's blond, she's got big hair, and she's loud. She tells people that she was a bear in her former life, because she likes to eat, she likes to sleep, and if you threaten any of her cubs, she'll hunt you down and mess you up. So needless to say, she's not as mellow as I am whenever I end up in the hospital. She cries, she yells, she prays, she buys a bunch of candy bars from the gift shop and stuffs them in her purse and will pull one out as needed (for herself or to try to bribe the nurses). Dino says that dealing with my mom makes him think about requesting a transfer to the morgue, “where it's nice and quiet.”

She didn't answer my question, because she was too busy kissing me all over my face: “Oh (kiss) my (kiss) God (kiss), I (kiss) was (kiss) so (kiss) worried (kiss) about (kiss) you (kiss). And (kiss) if (kiss) you (kiss) ever (kiss) scare (kiss) me (kiss) like (kiss) that (kiss) again (kiss), I'll (kiss) kill (kiss) you (kiss kiss).”

Somehow I managed to push her away, but it wasn't easy. She's strong, and I'm not. There's a reason I get picked last in dodgeball. Weak arms. Given the fact that I wake up in a hospital on a semiregular basis, we've established some routines to keep it from getting boring. Lately we've been playing this game where she pretends she's a game-show host and I'm a contestant, and I guess what landed me in the hospital for a chance to win fabulous cash and prizes. If I guess right on the first try, I get twenty bucks. Second try, banana split. Third try, a comic book.

“Okay, I'm gonna have to go with allergies,” I started.

Out of nowhere, I received another ten kisses all over my face.

“Mom! Stop it. What was that for?”

“What? A mom can't kiss her baby?”

“I'm not your baby. I'm a contestant. And my first guess is allergies.”

“Honey, let's not play this today. But don't you worry, Daddy's picking you up a banana split with caramel and hot fudge. He's also bringing an entire jar of cherries.”

An entire jar of cherries? My mom thinks those maraschino cherries are disgusting and gross. So much so that I had never even heard of one, or even seen one, until a year or so ago. Then last year my dad took my twin fourteen-year-old brothers and me out to Benihana when my mom was away. It was so crowded we had to wait for a table. I was sitting at the bar when the bartender smiled at me and handed me a cherry. I popped it into my mouth without a moment's hesitation. Now that I think about it, I clearly disobeyed one of my parents' ten commandments: Thou Shalt Not Eat Anything Offered to You by a Stranger. But come on, I was at Benihana, and nothing really bad ever happens at Benihana. That cherry was pretty much love at first bite. Maraschino cherries quickly became my favorite thing in the world, much to my mother's annoyance.

So I pretty much only get them every now and again, like when we go to Benihana (which isn't often enough), and when I'm lucky enough to score a banana split. So you didn't have to be Encyclopedia Brown to know her offering me a whole jar was not good. Not good at all.

“What happened? Am I okay?” I asked.

Suddenly I decided this was a good time to wiggle all my toes and move my arms and legs around. Phew, everything was still attached and working.

“You're fine, baby. Totally fine. You just had an ‘episode,'” my mom said, making the air quotes.

“What's an episode? What does that mean? Did I faint again?” I'm always fainting. It's just something I do when I get nervous. But I could tell this was something different because when I faint, I always wake up right after I crumple to the floor, and I don't end up in the hospital.

“Why don't we wait for Dr. Helen to come in and explain everything? Now, do you want me to text Dad and have him bring you anything else from SuperDuperScooper besides a banana split, maybe one of those chocolate-dipped waffle cone bowls?”

I shook my head. I wasn't in the mood for a banana split stuffed into a chocolate-dipped waffle cone bowl, which made me even more worried. Why didn't I want a banana split? I always want a banana split. So let's review: there were now three weird things going on. First, I didn't want a banana split. Second, my mom offered me a whole jar of maraschino cherries. And third, my dad was leaving work to come to the hospital. I looked out the window, and it was still light out.

Here's something you need to know about my dad. He works a lot. So I rarely see him in the daylight hours, because he leaves before I wake up and gets home after dark. I Skype with him a lot, so I see him, see him plenty, but I don't actually see him in person all that much.

You know that expression where they say he's as smart as a rocket scientist? Well, when they say that about my dad, they mean it, because he's actually a rocket scientist. But it's not like he builds rockets, which is what I used to brag about in the sandbox when I was younger. No, he works at the place where they build the rockets, and he works specifically in a lab where they make the fuel. As far as I can tell, it's one of those jobs that sound cooler than they really are, because every time my dad talks about work over dinner, my mom makes her famous fish face, where she sucks in her cheeks and bats her eyelashes, which she says are her gills, meaning she's trying to swim away as fast as her fish face will take her from his boring work stories.

“Why is Dad coming? Am I dying?”

“Of course not! Don't you say that. How dare you say that? I'm taking away your jar of cherries for saying that.”

“Mom, please tell me, why is Dad coming?”

I know that normally when a kid lands in the hospital, the dad drops everything and rushes over, but now that I'm in the triple digits when it comes to hospital visits, he just gets updates by text from my mom.

“What do you mean why? Because he's your dad and he loves you. That's why.”

“Wait, where's my titanium lug nut? Have you seen it? Where are my regular clothes?”

“Benji, your clothes are in the trunk of my car and need to be washed.”

My mom thinks I should leave my lug nut at home and not carry it around with me, because she's afraid I'll lose it. But it's been over five years since I got it, and I still haven't lost it . . . yet.

Before I could ask her to go to the car and look for it, Dino walked in. Now, let me tell you about Dino. He's crazy tall, like six feet seven inches tall, like professional basketball tall. He has to special order his shoes and jeans on the internet. When my mom takes a picture of the two of us on my discharge day, she has to back all the way down to the end of the hallway just to get us both in the picture. He keeps telling her he'll buy her a panoramic digital camera when he wins the lottery so she won't have that problem anymore. My mom is a crazy scrapbooker. She wants to remember everything, good and bad, because it's the bad that makes the good so good. She pretty much has my entire life recorded in crazy detail. I know lots of moms keep the first tooth their kid ever lost, or even a little locket of hair after their first haircut. Well, my mom kept all my baby teeth (gross, I know). She took a Polaroid of each of them and put the picture under my pillow for the tooth fairy. She has the thread from the first time I got stitches, pressed on a page like it's a flower. Enough said, right? She says I'll be happy to have all this stuff when I'm older. I know she's wrong, but I always agree with her, because she's usually holding a hot-glue gun. Let me give you some life advice: you should always agree with someone when they are holding a hot-glue gun. Once my mom hot-glued one of the twins' basketballs to the floor because she kept telling him not to dribble it in the house and he kept doing it anyway.

“Hey, hey, hey, little man,” said Dino, waving his hole puncher in the air. “I heard you were back!”

“One more visit and then you owe me a cool prize,” I said, handing him my punch card.

Dino nodded and said, “You know it, little man.” He held up his massive fist, and we did a fist bump. Then he hightailed it out of there. He's no fool. He took one look at my mother's crazy eyes, made up an excuse, and left. He already has his own big loud mom in his life to deal with, so I didn't blame him for not wanting to deal with a second one. We actually bonded over our crazy moms. One night when I couldn't sleep, I snuck out of my room, past my own sleeping mom, and found him in the patient lounge watching soccer. We competed in the “My mom is crazier than your mom” game for an hour. Then we heard a bloodcurdling scream, which woke up half the floor. “Ahhhhhhhhhhh! Call the poooooliiiice! Someone stole my baaaaabyyyyy!” Yep. You guessed. The screamer? My mom. The baby? Me. Word around the hospital corridors was that the psychiatric patients heard her all the way on the top floor and freaked out. I didn't move at all. I just shook my head. “Great. I'm never gonna hear the end of this one.” Dino took one look at my face and said, “You win this round, little man.”

Okay, so now we're all caught up. You know all the major players: me, my mom, Dino, and my dad, who had just arrived at the hospital.

As loud as my mom is, my dad is quiet, except for when he laughs. But today he wasn't laughing. He looked worried, which made me worried. My mom noticed this and smacked him on the arm to make him stop. Before he could respond, the twins stormed in. Here's the best way to describe my older twin brothers. They're absolutely everything I am not. They are tall, they are good-looking, they are strong, and they are popular. They are what you would call super winners in the game of life.

Oh, here's the other thing you need to know about them: Where I'm mouthy and have an exceptionally large vocabulary for my age, they're quiet, and when they do talk, they pretty much use one-syllable words. Their names are Brett and Brick, though I secretly gave them the nicknames Grunty and Mumbles. They have not so secretly given me all sorts of different nicknames throughout the years: Baby B, B-Baby, BenjiWenji, Bundt (as in the cake), Bunt (as in the baseball term), Butt as in well, your butt, and every single variation of butt-something you can ever hope to dream of: Butt-Head, Butt-Face, Butt-Dog, Butt-Ball, Butt-Cream, Butt-Brother, Butt-Bread, Butt-Rump. You name it, they've put the word “butt” in front of it. I'm pretty sure it's just a big-brother thing, though they're careful not to let Mom catch them calling me butt-anything, because she overheard them once and they both got in trouble.